Having applauded the Gilroy Unified School District for raising
standardized test scores, in particular at its underperforming
elementary and junior high schools, we must unfortunately move the
spotlight back to a troubling area of neglect, academic excellence
in reading and writing skills at Gilroy High School.
Having applauded the Gilroy Unified School District for raising standardized test scores, in particular at its underperforming elementary and junior high schools, we must unfortunately move the spotlight back to a troubling area of neglect, academic excellence in reading and writing skills at Gilroy High School. We must address the question of why local employers complain that employees coming from Gilroy High can not read or write well. We must ask why we are not fully preparing our best GHS grads for college-level English and writing courses.
Why do we continue to graduate students who can neither read nor write to an acceptable level? The ongoing struggle to arrive at a core reading list for Gilroy High School’s English program reveals much about the answer to that question.
The district has appointed a Reading List Advisory Group comprised of “stakeholders” – teachers, parents and, unbelievably, students – to study the criteria for a core reading list and ultimately recommend the texts to be included.
It’s rather unique – but necessary in this case – that parents are involved. But students? High school students, no matter how earnest their intentions, have neither the life experiences nor the qualifications to make English language curriculum decisions. Their inclusion is symptomatic of the chaos that reigns within the English Department and administration. Students have no place on this task force.
And the district already has a broad-based coalition of Gilroy parents to listen to. If ever a united body of concerned parents representing the left and right sides of the political spectrum existed in Gilroy, it is the Alliance for Academic Excellence, which has been tracking deficiencies in the English language curriculum for several years. They have already made their findings available to the RLAG and the curriculum professionals within the district. Their recommendations are right on target, even if the district, through its manipulation of the RLAG, has so far chosen to ignore them.
As several Alliance members have noted, the GHS English program needs to get past the “victim list” mentality that dismisses the works of Shakespeare (and other dead white men, like Hemingway) in favor of politically correct, easy reads like the House on Mango Street and Rain of Gold. Diversity for diversity’s sake is an empty ideology. The English department needs to exorcise the political agendas that exclude classic, accepted college preparatory texts out of hand. And the current practice of choosing novels based on their convenient alignment with a social studies curriculum must end.
There are problems of methodology as well. For the most part, GHS ninth and 10th graders read the same novels, which means that honors students tend to bog down reading novels below their level. To meet the needs of individual students, the Alliance has also recommended that the district adopt an anthology solution to the reading and writing curriculum, as is done at many top high schools, where teachers may choose from a list of recommended texts but also instructional materials to support those texts. There is a reading anthology in use at the high school, but it is nearly 40 years old, and there aren’t enough copies to go around. At a minimum, the district needs to update to one of the state-recommended anthologies for high schoolers.
Our paid professionals, specifically Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Jacki Horejs and GHS Principal Bob Bravo, need to move these long-overdue changes forward and break the logjam of resistance.
Superintendent Edwin Diaz has made the notion of adopting “best practices” a cornerstone for change and improvement in the district. It works. But the English Department and administration are ignoring Diaz’s mantra to the detriment of students and the school’s reputation.
That’s a shame. GUSD should do the right thing and revamp the English curriculum before the next semester begins.
